1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital copier or multiple-function image processing device. The invention is more particularly related to the manipulation of images which are scanned, stored, or printed. The invention is still further related to the rotation of images, the logical combination of two or more images, and the formation of an image by repeatedly using a section of an image, all being implemented using smaller blocks of the image.
2. Discussion of the Background
Digital copiers are image processing devices which scan an image, store a digital representation of the image in memory, and print the digital representation of the image. In order to print the digitized images at a rate similar to rates produced by conventional analog copiers which never store a digital representation of the image but use optical components such as mirrors and lenses to generate an image on a photoconductive drum or belt, a very large amount of data must be moved at a high rate of speed. The requirement to quickly move such a large amount of data has pushed the capabilities of current data processing and storage devices to their limits.
Digital copiers may have a need to manipulate image data which has been scanned, is stored, or to be printed. A conventional manner of accomplishing this function is to load the image into memory which is to be processed, and then to process this image. However, the inventors of this application have noticed that time may be wasted by waiting for the entire image to be loaded into memory. Further, the image processing functions may be the weakness of the digital copier which restricts the number of copies which the digital copier can produce over a given time period.